About us

Perception underpins everything that we feel, think and believe. It is the source of all artistic expression and scientific exploration. What we perceive IS who we are. Perception is the foundation of human experience, but few of us understand why we see what we do, much less how.

The Lab of Misfits Studio, founded by Neuro-scientist, Dr Beau Lotto, is the world’s first neuro-design studio and public perception research space. The Lab of Misfits turns the world into a lab as a way of enabling insights for companies and organisations.

The lab creates unique real-world ‘experiential-experiments’ that places the public at the centre of the process of discovery. By spanning social and personal boundaries between people, brands and institutions, our aim is to create, expand and apply insights into what it is to be a perceiving human. The Lab of Misfits gives audiences and clients the opportunity to see differently … more than this … to embody an ecology of innovation.

By revealing the startling truths about the brain and its perceptions, we show that the next big innovation is not a new technology: it is a new way of seeing.

Let us help show you how uncertainty and the brain’s need to resolve it, is essential for thinking about not only branding and business, but specifically design, leadership and innovation.

When we look out into the world, we see trees, buildings and fast-moving cars. We see faces and emotions displayed on those faces. We see all this, but none of these objects, emotions or concepts actually exists in the light that falls onto our eyes. So how do we actually see things?

What we see is shaped by experience, by interaction – which makes each of us an essential part of the process by which we ‘make sense’ of the world.

The fact that the patterns of light that fall onto our eyes are inherently meaningless – unless, that is, we are able to interpret them on the basis of previous experience – is fundamental to all our work. Resolving such uncertainty is the basis of all that the brain does. And understanding how the brain solves this problem is therefore the basis for understanding not only how and why we see what we do, but who we are as individuals and as a society. And while no one really likes uncertainty – it’s a bad thing both in evolutionary terms and emotionally – the irony is that only through uncertainty can we truly create something new.

Redefining normalityNeuroscience research on the perception of light tells us that we did not evolve to see the world as it is, but to see a world that is useful to see, and to find patterns in information and imbue those patterns with a behavioural value. This means that in order to make sense of the world, we continually redefine normality, a normality that is grounded in our personal relationships, interactions and histories. This capacity is vital for our survival. Yet since our early experiences are what our brains use to develop context, it’s easy to imagine how we may be limiting ourselves by unconsciously filtering out lots of information. That’s essential when we are driving down the street, for example, but what about the emotional contexts we develop as children which we then assume are true in adulthood? Put another way, how can we avoid redefining the normality of the present through the limiting lens of the past?

Seeing myself seeAs humans, our capacity to be an observer of ourselves – to ‘See Myself See’ – enables us to become directly aware of how intimately tied we are to our environment, and to our interaction with that environment — in other words, our ecology. To ‘see ourselves see’ is to understand the importance of perception, of experience and of imagination in shaping who we are as an individual. It is also the principle act of consciousness that has the power to transform our view of the world and of ourselves, since it creates the opportunity to find and create new relationships that will shape future behaviour. If we don’t understand that what we’re doing now is shaped by what we did in the past, then all we’re ever going to do is respond. The only way we can do something creative or innovative is to step outside and see why we’re doing what we’re doing.

See also

Street science – experiments, installations and performances that place people in the unique context of ‘seeing themselves see’ More

Research focusIn science, the answers to questions of perception reside in understanding how the architecture of the brain’s visual network – whether that of a human, a bumblebee or an artificial agent – represents its past interactions with the world. This is a question that we approach from different perspectives and at different levels of analysis.

Our research focuses on colour, and there are two reasons for this. Firstly, if none of our perceptions are things that exist in the world in any real sense, colour shows this in its most explicit form. Secondly, colour is the simplest visual perception that the brain generates.

All our research activities fall into one of three interrelated research themes: human systems (exploring perception at the psychological and social level), simple systems (exploring the behaviour and physiology of bumblebees), and synthetic systems (using computational science, artificial life and evolutionary robotics). The importance of uniting research on humans, bees and synthetic systems in parallel under the same theoretical framework is that our research collectively provides the first comprehensive explanation of how visual networks overcome sensory uncertainty at the behavioural, physiological and computational level.

Perception, by its very nature, transcends the artificial boundaries within and between disciplines. Our work touches many fields, including art, design and education, as well as pure neuroscience. So on any given day, we are just as likely to be creating an art installation as running an experiment – and this could be happening inside the lab or in a public space. It is therefore critical that Lab of Misfits' research takes place outside typical academic environments.

What our lab does have in common with most other science labs is that there are both resident and external experts driving our research and other activities, except that they may come from a whole range of disciplines, particularly our external collaborators. However, our location in London’s Science Museum also enables us to create an innovative environment in which the public can be directly involved in and affected by the lab’s activities, bringing with it tremendous implications for scientific discovery, as well as for public engagement in science. This means that we can potentially run experiments on hundreds, and potentially thousands, of subjects – something which is almost impossible to orchestrate in a conventional lab – and in doing so discover the interpersonal differences between people.

So, Lab of Misfits in the Science Museum consists of a grey lab, where people can interact with the objects, sculptures and installations that we create; a black lab, where people can become subjects of experiments; and a white lab, where people can come and design experiments, by invitation. Access to the grey lab is largely open to the public, but given the nature of the objects and their need for interaction, numbers are limited – since our strategy is not about the quantity of observation, but about the quality of interaction.

We are developing a series of unique public programmes that span social and personal boundaries between people, disciplines and institutions and add an ambitious and challenging dimension to Lab of Misfits' scientific, artistic and educational work. These programmes – such as i,am…, i,maker, i,scientist and the public perception project – aim to give the public, from different walks of life and including schoolchildren, a range of opportunities to explore perception, and themselves, enabling them to take part in and even to create real scientific experiments.

The universality of perception allows us to directly resonate with (or, to put it another way, speak the language of) a wide variety of people, who can all talk in their own language – whether it’s fashion or art or education. The reason is that these are all perspectives on the same question: how do we make sense of ourselves in the world?

Our programmes seek to advance the concept of ‘science-as-a-way-of-being’ (as opposed to simply a process of investigation), result in novel – as well as publishable – scientific understanding, while at the same time having the potential to transform people’s own perception of self and the world, and in the process potentially transform people’s lives at a fundamentally personal level.

Two very significant public programmes, i,scientist and My School, are focussed around education, around the teaching of science specifically but also learning generally.

Children are in many ways more open than adults to transforming the way they think about the world, as they have shorter histories to influence their perceptions of themselves and the world. We believe that by using the neuroscience of perception and the concept of ‘Seeing Myself See’ it is possible to foster a different kind of learning. By supporting and guiding children in the idea that the same object can be perceived differently, children can be lead away from the more comfortable black and white view of the world, to the more challenging but more enlightening realisation of the greys in between. It’s about creating an environment where uncertainty is supported and celebrated, bringing with it an openness to discovery.

Science in school is often presented as a series of factual certainties, whereas in fact real scientific work is full of uncertainty – that’s why it’s so exciting. Furthermore, science shouldn’t be seen as something that is detached from the real world – it’s just a certain way of looking at things. Our aim is to approach science in a way that’s creative, daring and, above all, fun.

Explaining the biological principles that are common to all visual animals.

Understanding how and why we see what we do will ultimately require understanding the complex, emergent and interdependent relationships between biology and psychology. Here, we feature work relevant to the mechanisms of seeing. This includes research on bumblebees as this has the potential to explain the biological principles that are common to all visual animals, including humans.

Investigating how the human mind makes sense from the senseless

Since there is no inherent value in the incredibly complex patterns of light that fall onto our eyes, the brain tells itself stories, and it is these stories that are our perceptual and conceptual truths of the world that guide our behaviour. Here, we feature our work that is aimed at helping us to understand the principles by which the human brain encodes the meaning of sensory relationships that were previously useful – since the process of perception is, in fact, a manifestation of past experience.

Exploring perception using computation and artificial life.

While all brains are made from the same biological stuff, their diversity in structure is phenomenal. And yet, all animals as diverse as bees and humans evolved to solve the same visual puzzles, and even – probably as a consequence – see the same illusions. A critical aim of our research is to understand what is common between such divergent systems. Only when we know this answer will we be able to understand the principle by which the brain – any brain – makes sense of the world.

If such a common principle exists, then it'll be best described at the level of mathematics (computation more generally), because this level of explanation is mute to the actual structure of the system of interest – in the same way that mathematical theories of evolution transcend the structure that's evolving.

On this page, we feature our work that is attempting to discover how all networks – natural or artificial – resolve the inherent uncertainty of sensory information, which is the critical challenge facing any robust sensory system; some of this work involves playing god: evolving artificial life systems within artificial worlds. Answering this question will not only give us deep insights into the nature of perception, and indeed into human nature generally, but will also lead to highly robust artificial machine systems, which currently cannot out-compete the simple bumblebee.

In addition to this basic mathematical research, we are also applying our understanding of biological computation to new explore new ways of thinking in art and music.

Engaging the public ... literally

Fundamental to the success of Lab of Misfits' research is our engagement with people at multiple levels. The point is to enable others to consider the importance of not being an outside observer of nature, but one defined by interaction with our environment towards fostering a more empathetic and creative view of nature and human nature. Crucial to this is our ability to 'see ourselves see'.

Therefore, in addition to publishing scientific papers, we create physical structures and stage events in venues ranging from galleries and concert halls to schools, and even the side of the street – as well as in our own lab in the Science Museum. Our work has also featured on several television and radio programmes. All these activities are highlighted on this page.

We call our public work 'street science', since all of our work is ambitious and truly experimental – in that obtaining real data, information and understanding is at the heart of each project. In this way, we aim to leave a trace in the viewer that goes beyond their immediate sensory experience and also to contribute to technical innovation, while simultaneously impacting current understanding of nature and human nature.

Here, we highlight the events, papers, talks, projects, performances and installations that will soon be in the public domain. Once Lab of Misfits has fixed a launch date for a particular projects or event, this will be listed on our Newspage.

Here, we describe projects that are in the development phase. These may include commissioned projects, or ideas for research or public installations that are being developed, but are not yet realised.

Here, we list all our public installations, published papers, public programmes, television and radio appearances for easy and quick reference. The term 'Everything' might be better to describe what's here, as nothing included on this page is considered 'history'.

Lab of Misfits have successfully piloted a potential new model for scientific research and science communication, with The Experiment - an immersive neuroscience research experience that took place in a Victorian dungeon in Clerkenwell, London on 24th November.

We have developed a set of tools, that make use of and extend the popular Processing open-source multimedia programming environment. Together they will enable artists without the skills of computer programming to significantly influence the content of their visual performance, while also keeping the programming of new graphics algorithms accessible to those seeking greater creative freedom.

Translating light into sound so that people hear their visual world is a wonderful way to experience the process of the brain actually learning to make sense of the world. As part of Passing Through – an exhibition at the James Talyor Gallery in London, Lab of Misfits in collaboration with Stephen Gage of the Bartlett created 'Hearing Colour'.

Sitting in London's Regents Canal (in Hackney) is a narrow-boat where all its energy is renewable. The owners of this boat commissioned Lab of Misfits to install its first generation Solar Stones, which trickle-charge the boats rechargeable battery system. The images here show the installation process, which was completed in May, 2009.

In the project Blackawton Bees (in collaboration with Head Teach Dave Strudwick and tech Tina Wadwellyn) we again have performed truly novel experiments on bumblebees at a primary school in Devon. Except this time we have completely removed all boundaries: The experiments were not devised by the 'scientist', but by twenty five 8-year-old children.

The Beacon is a 6 metre 'Street Science' installation of solar panels, glass and light erected on Old Street in London. The work is an experimental public structure that considers our dependence on the environment, not only for our survival, but also for who we are, even the colours we see.

An exhibition that provided a unique perspective on light and colour as part of the 'Dan Flavin: A Retrospective' exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, and included Beau Lotto's White Light White Shadows installation.

Provides links to TV and radio programmes that have featured Lab of Misfits' work and/or interviews with Beau Lotto, as well as to selected interviews or profiles in the press, both print and online, and published books.

This is the first project in our i,maker programme. The idea is that anyone can come into our space, grab a wrench and build a scooter from scratch. Why? Because it is through the process of making that we make sense of our world and ourselves. The programme will take place in October 2011 and will last for one week. If you'd like to take part, please keep an eye on our News page, as well as our Home page.

There's plenty of research to suggest that the visual system is intimately related to the auditory system. In collaboration with Mick Grierson of Goldsmiths, we will be creating experiments that investigate how deep this relationship goes, and whether this potential relationship is consistent across age, sex, race, culture etc.

Beau Lotto is working with the wonderful Anna Starkey
on a series of children's books that explore the nature of perception and how we can take ownership of what we see (and don't see). Bee and Me is the first in the series of books for children.

How do we enable large numbers of children (AND their teachers and schools) to become true creators of science without losing the intimacy that is required to transform lives en route? As with all our work, the i,scientist community is a research project that will be attempting to answer this question.

Lab of Misfits has many aims and ambitions, one of which is to be a space (conceptual and physical) where people can become creators of science... through play. We're therefore hoping to create a 'club' whose members will have access to the lab at their own will. But we've really no idea where this will lead... we would like the members to figure that out for us instead.

William Blake is fundamental to our thinking about how we see things and how they can be looked at from a different perspective. To this day his ideas remain contemporary and relevant, making it a pleasure to have been requested to take part in the Ashmolean's exhibition of Blake's works.

Physical interaction is the route via which the brain makes sense of the world and oneself in that world. Making, then, is the deeply intuitive process by which we create what we see, hear, feel and touch. 'Making Chocolate' will be the second of our i'maker projects. The project is being created in collaboration with cocoa bean growers in Ecuador.

Beau Lotto, in collaboration with Dave Strudwick, is developing ambitious plans to build on Lab of Misfits' existing My School programme in order to create a new school called My School for Inspiring Talents (MySFIT) – one that aims to engender what is fundamental to well-being (and good science)... playfulness, openness, adaptability and empathy. The plan is to apply those principles of science to education, and in MySFIT specifically for disadvantaged young people.

Innovation requires seeing the world – and oneself – uniquely, but this is hard to do, especially within institutions. We are therefore creating a number of workshops for the creative industries to apply our understanding of perception to foster innovation in their own fields. These workshops take full advantage of our wonderful lab space deep inside one of the world's leading public institutions: London's Science Museum.

The language of fashion has the potential to transform lives for the positive, since fashion is something we participate in every morning when we open the wardrobe (consciously or otherwise). Beau Lotto, in collaboration with one of the UK's leading fashion designers, Helen Story, aims to 'redefine' the catwalk and what it represents.

Imagine the orchestra, not laid out in front of you on a stage, but as a personified wall of sound measuring 25 metres tall by 40 metres wide. Also imagine listening to that human wall of music, not on the ground in seats but moving around, hearing the same live performance from many different perspectives. vEnsemble (or the Vertical Orchestra) is our dream to transform the composition and performance of music through the science of spatial sound perception.

What is theatre? How does a director direct? Indeed how does anyone make a decision? Living Narratives is a Lab of Misfits installation/experience created in collaboration with the super-energetic and creative Danish theatre Director Sidsel Bech (currently based in Liverpool). Living Narratives involves tens – even hundreds of people in a space with two simple tasks: stay in the space and never stop walking.

LumaKey is a unique, hand-held object that translates the light intensity on a piece of paper into sound. With this simple object, it's possible to create musical rhythms from visual patterns, and in doing so experience the visual world in a wholly different way. Like all our 'products', we will be selling the LumaKey to sell an idea... the idea of transforming lives by transforming perception.

One of Beau's best friends is Michele Gauler, who also happens to be a fabulous Berlin-based designer. Together they are exploring the medium of textiles as a language for exploring and communicating the nature of perception. The See Shirts – many of which will feature hand-painted images on organic cotton – will be sold as part of our line of 'perceptual ware'.

A new sound installation by Lab of Misfits, the Triptych is being created in collaboration with Alex Gabby (film maker), Mike Walker (sound designer) and Larry Goves (composer). The piece explores the relationship between what we see and what we hear, and uses this basic neurological link as the basis for new musical composition and performance.

Lab of Misfits is in the process of creating a new 4-metre tall installation that changes the direction of rotation in the perception of those looking at it. The Windmill is a new large, outdoor installation of wood and steel that can be installed on the grounds of a school; the first one will be at Blackawton School in Devon.

The timing of cell death in the vision network is coincident with the end of the network's formation. Target-Derived Neurotrophic Factors Regulate the Death of Developing Forebrain Neurons after a Change in their Trophic Requirements.

A chapter entitled 'Using illusions to teach children about the science and art of seeing and conceiving', written by Beau Lotto in collaboration with Sara J. Downham and Dave Strudwick, is included in Creative Encounters, published by the Wellcome Trust in 2008.

The 'Point of perception' was a collaborative project between Madi Boyd, Mark Lythgo and
R. Beau Lotto, which aimed to place people consciously at the point of uncertainty, between the known and unknown.

Perceptual rivalry is contingent on the perceptual meaning of stimuli.

Provides links to TV and radio programmes that have featured Lab of Misfits' work and/or interviews with Beau Lotto, as well as to selected interviews or profiles in the press, both print and online, and published books.